DALLAS -- College football's big boys aren't ready to break up the NCAA and raze its stately compound in downtown Indianapolis.
But if the sport's heavyweights don't start getting some cooperation from the rest of the NCAA's member schools -- i.e., athletic departments with smaller checkbooks, fewer national championships and less tradition -- the idea might not sound so preposterous in the very near future.
And who can blame them?
It's like your neighborhood ballpark concession stand having as much say as McDonald's in the regulation of the fast-food industry.
It doesn't make sense.
Under the current NCAA structure, fledgling FBS programs like Georgia State, Massachusetts, Old Dominion, South Alabama and Texas-San Antonio have as much power as traditional heavyweights like Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Texas and USC. Heck, every FCS, Division II and Division III football program -- and even the NCAA member institutions that don't even field football teams (hello, Albertus Magnus and Oswego State!) -- carry as much weight in making important decisions about football as the sport's power brokers.
Under current NCAA rules, it's one vote for every school. And you don't even have to play football to decide whether an FBS team should have 85 or 100 football scholarships or whether the value of a scholarship should go beyond room, board, books and tuition.
College football's socialism is why it's about to become the "big five" against everybody else.
Is it time for football powers to split?
But if the sport's heavyweights don't start getting some cooperation from the rest of the NCAA's member schools -- i.e., athletic departments with smaller checkbooks, fewer national championships and less tradition -- the idea might not sound so preposterous in the very near future.
And who can blame them?
It's like your neighborhood ballpark concession stand having as much say as McDonald's in the regulation of the fast-food industry.
It doesn't make sense.
Under the current NCAA structure, fledgling FBS programs like Georgia State, Massachusetts, Old Dominion, South Alabama and Texas-San Antonio have as much power as traditional heavyweights like Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Texas and USC. Heck, every FCS, Division II and Division III football program -- and even the NCAA member institutions that don't even field football teams (hello, Albertus Magnus and Oswego State!) -- carry as much weight in making important decisions about football as the sport's power brokers.
Under current NCAA rules, it's one vote for every school. And you don't even have to play football to decide whether an FBS team should have 85 or 100 football scholarships or whether the value of a scholarship should go beyond room, board, books and tuition.
College football's socialism is why it's about to become the "big five" against everybody else.
Is it time for football powers to split?
